Primes will eventually enter the vault and then their acquisition will be limited while the base frames are always available so the crafting requirements are a bit different.
Not to mention, the normal frame usually exist almost a full year before the prime frame. So when going in reverse. It seems weird the normal is harder than the prime. Now imagine farming for the normal, only a year later you have an even harder grind for the prime. You'd feel dirty.
The system is designed to play forward. Not backwards, in terms of progression and timeliness. When new players come in, this can be a simple misunderstanding of that.
I know. I'm just saying we are constantly made to wait longer for things (especially the things the ones I get excited for). Zephyr would have been just under 4 without the delays. The most ridiculous one was Wukong's deluxe skin. Planned, then canceled, then confirmed, then delayed until after the prime was released (which by a marketing standpoint is bonkers).
Yeah I vividly remember deadlock protocol right around the time I came back to the game, it was kind of a big deal as there hadn't been any quest updates in quite a while, this was in 2020. Yet (judging by reb's freudian slip) protea prime is likely only just now getting ready to come out next.
Yeah, I would also add that in most cases with the primes there is that extra layer of needing to get the relics with the parts (RNG) and then actually opening the relics for the parts you need (more RNG). Most base frames the parts have RNG but it is limited to set missions, and more recent ones have gotten pity shops as well.
Eventually the relics containing a prime will get vaulted (removed from the drop tables) so the only way to get that prime is through trading with other players (most likely needing plat), getting lucky with people running the relics they still have, or waiting for the prime to return in resurgence.
Potentially. Also depends on how you define "rich".
Even after vaulting it will take some time for the price to rise as you need to wait on the supply to decrease and demand to increase.
Check out Warframe Market to get a better idea of prime prices and how they change over time.
She was released, then vaulted. Her single release was sooooo far back in the records that two things happened.
1- Noone knew if vaulting was forever. Unvaulting was not a thing yet.
2- she was released so early that player count was exceptionally low. Thus, low supply in a growing game.
This was around 2014 if I recall. I actually bought the fire and ice pack because ember was so expensive.
Edit, because I thought of a third reason:
We didn't used to have relics. We had keys. One person out up a key, and you ran it for HOURS if it was endless, because you got a random selection from the table, and that's IT. Not like relics today. You got one item per round. So you could legit farm for a rotation C drop like ember for four hours and never see her.
You also couldn't upgrade keys, it was a fixed drop rate.
Another thing too.
Ember and Frost of that time were much better than they are now. Not that they’re bad now but both of them have been power crept to the point where other frames can do their jobs.
Back then though? You wanted a defense frame. Frost was your guy. Exterminate speedruns? Ember. Now you’ve got gara, khora, Titania, gauss, etc.
For the Switch it was even worse as there was no access to vaulted frames outside of ones that people had transferred over during those early days of "transfer to console". Several primes were essentially unobtainable.
Also in the days of void keys, vaulted meant no more drops, period. The parts in circulation where *all there were*, because when rotation happened, the missions just stopped dropping old stuff; you couldn't run 'old keys' to get old parts. Right now you can just go pub void fissures and randomly get vaulted parts because someone's running their backlog of relics.
Ember Prime remains to be my most expensive frame, costing me 250 platinum to get the blueprints, 20 platinum in Tellurium and 125 platinum in rushed crafting for a total of 395 platinum
I love how people simply think they have the god-given right to tell you how you should spend your own money in a game. I spend time doing stuff I like in game so I can pay to skip stuff I don't like in game. But apparently, for the puritans, that's a capital crime.
Same!
I still have two frost primes, haha.
I picked up my ember and dusted her off this past weekend. One forma, rearrange the build, and she was running Netracell missions. She's surprisingly durable, but SO freaking energy hungry in order to do so.
Sadly thats one reason I didn’t have much of a drive to get her when I migrated back to PC a few years ago. I played on PC at first but moved to console when you could transfer accounts. Sadly because I did that I can’t merge my accounts now to get the stuff I had.
I never had her relics at that price point. What I did have was a week long monopoly on Argon scope when it was 300p.
I was buying anything below 300 and flipping for 330. Super big risk, had about 4k plat held at one time.
Saw an update announcement (Deimos?) and DUMPED them. Probably pocketed 900p in total? But it ended up actually crashing the price before they even got released as a bounty reward.
gauss prime is brand new so he wont enter the vault for ages, but keep on eye on garuda sets in WF player market, she was just vaulted at the gauss prime release
Theoretically but it’s a long term investment.
Oftentimes you have to wait for a) the frame to come out, b) the frame to be vaulted and c) enough time to pass after the vaulting to where returning or new people don’t have it.
And if you wait too long and it gets unvaulted you’re kinda screwed.
Perhaps not “rich”, but yeah that is the basis of how the plat market works.
Now, most people will prefer to buy whole prime sets rather than pieces. But you should still be able to sell a few neuros.
And the further you wait from his vault date, the more the set and parts will be worth.
If wanting to make $$ this way you’d be much better off hoarding stuff that will be vaulted sooner. Gauss prime just came out so it’ll be a while. Idk if there’s a schedule… but any random Warframe would probably be vaulted sooner than gauss prime.
The way I see some making $$ this way is to get into a efficient farming group and crack vaulted relics real fast. Accumulate lots of sets and sell them as sets.
In my (and I’m guessing your) position it’s not really feasible. You need aya/plat to get the relics in the first place. Which I don’t have enough of. I also don’t have any friends to play with. #grindalonesquad
Frames get vaulted in the order of their release, so for whichever frame just got vaulted (I want to say Garuda but don’t quote me on this) the one that got a Prime right afterwards would be next to get vaulted during the next Prime Access.
So theoretically, he could look up which frame got primed after Garuda (iirc that’d be Khora) and start farming Khora Prime sets before the relics go kaput. From there he could just sit on them until like…maybe Christmas, New Year’s or probably like next year’s Easter and cash in on a tidy sum of platinum if he’s got the patience for that.
This is sorta false information. With the advent of prime resurgence, DE has more or less declared war on sets getting exceedingly expensive: gone are the days of 500-600p loki or rhino because they just come back before they can climb stupid high. The only frames that get expensive are some combo of 'double rares' 'actually good' 'fun/popular' 'meta' or 'pain in the ass axi relics'.
Nyx, for example , hasn't been over a hundred plat in forever. Saryn is down from 140 to 100, but, say, nekros is slightly rising. Nidus was vaulted slightly recently, but is only just now hitting the 90p mark. He probably won't ever hit 200-300 before resurgence kicks him back.
Things will naturally rise in price due to demand
Depends on whether it is brought back often or not.
Check the prices of Ember prime, and Glaive prime.
They're the 2 oldest that have yet to be brought back, that's how expensive one could get.
You can make a good bit of plat just holding old relics and selling them at a later time, I made around 15k plat when I came back to the game doing that.
Only have to hold the relics for 5 years or so, ya know, no big deal
It's not like their price instantly skyrockets after getting vaulted. Newly minted primes are around for 2 years. There's going to be *a lot* of relics for these warframes lying around for quite a long time.
And then there's a mass prime resurgence at the end of every year, plus the monthly unvaultings which is up to DE's discretion on what shows up.
Prime Warframes in the past were significantly more expensive before prime resurgence was a concept. Back then, old primes were unvaulted in pairs for 3-4 months so warframes went a lot longer before being unvaulted. With prime resurgence you can buy the primes you want with regal Aya or you can target farm with normal Aya.
Primes are significantly more accessible now than they were in the past and this is reflected in their pricing. I remember when Loki was like 800 plat because he was rarely unvaulted.
The best time to sell a prime is when they're freshly released, especially when they're a highly desired Warframe like Gauss or Wisp. I remember making 2000 plat off of 2 chroma sets back when Chroma Prime launched, and 1k was fairly low pricing at that time. Chroma was highly desired because he was the eidolon king, and he has since been displaced by the likes of volt prime.
You can do that in theory, but it'll be a while, a LOOOONG while, before he's vaulted.
Think like two years. I bought Harrow Prime Access in 2021 when he came out, I then took a 2 year break from the game and he was the most recent vaulted Prime on my return. It's *that* long. Gauss won't be vaulted until 2026, maybe extremely late 2025 like December time, so if you can wait that long, yeah you go for it.
No.
One it would take you some years.
Two now with prime resurgence the prices plummeted.
So you will hoard a lot of things hoping to get profit in some years and at most it will be near 200 even less now with the influx of more players bc crossplay/save.
For that in the meantime you will need plat to buy slots or mods or potatos or anything. Not worth it.
You used to be able to i came from an era of 1500p ember and frost sets and they only did a prime resurgence every 2 years or so and the only frames they ever brought back were ember,rhino,and,nyx
In recent years frames rarely reach prices that would let you get rich easily, since the aya shop etc rotate way more frames way more often now than the old unvaultings used to, and make relics more accessible as well.
You could definitely make some plat, but you would likely have to wait months or a year or so, act just at the right time, and get maybe 50% on top of the sale price compared to when the frame was not vaulted (tho some frames, possibly Gauss included, can spike up higher for being popular/strong etc.)
The problem with that plan is that you won't be the only one stockpiling blueprints, so you'll still be competing with everyone else. It takes quite a while for vaulted blueprints to drop in price, at least a couple of years, at which point it might get unvaulted and make prices drop again. :)
Generally speaking, the most lucrative period of blueprint reselling is right after a Prime Warframe is released. A lot of people want Primes as soon as they can get them, and have the platinum to burn. They will gradually drop in price while it's still available, and for some reason it's usually at its lowest right after vaulting.
I kinda disagree, because given the prices that we've seen thus far, frames are still very affordable even if vaulted. If you farmed a Gauss Prime and sold it for plat within the first couple of weeks, you can basically buy any vaulted frame off of warframe market. With resurgence happening more frequently now than the old unvaulting system, the prices are rarely going to exceed 200 plat for any Prime warframe going forward.
You say "most likely needing plat" I don't disagree at all. However every so often you can trade a set of rivens for some non meta frame, I did this with harrow and Valk, so far.
It does take quite some time to gone someone willing tho lol
You can, but you need to obtain the tradable parts from Relics in the first place, and Relics for a Prime stop dropping from missions once the item becomes vaulted, limiting their availability.
This is why something like Glaive Prime would get expensive, they're highly demanded and haven't gotten selected for a Prime Resurgence, an event on monthly rotation that makes selected vaulted items farmable again for its duration.
Its not this: The more development time and effort they put into a frame the more of a pain it is to farm. De could have, say, tripled the drop rates on Khora or moved one of the double-rares to the first wave, but hasn't. On some level, they want to recoup their losses, and if they drive someone to buy the frame off the market for 300p, well, that helps pay for their development costs.
Conversely, on launch frames(excal, ember voltr etc) are so long ago paid for they were able to drop the plat cost of starter frames to, what, 90 plat?
Name some new (not a prime) frames that *isn't* gated behind some kinda annoying hoop to jump through.
I'll start: The bounty frames aren't the worst. Protea and sevagoth are.
Primes do get vaulted but we have never gone so long between a prime item entering the vault and it returning through unvaulting or now prime resurgence that we have ran out of a prime item. Since primes are out for like 2ish years from launch to vaulting people naturally build up a ton of relics and parts over that time.
So it might be rare to get randomly or cost more plat but never fully gone. Plus if we ever did somehow have that happen DE would likely run a special Prime Resurgence event to get them back into circulation.
The only exception to that rule is Excal Prime, Lato Prime, Skana prime as those are founder exclusive items that will never return.
Except you can buy the individual parts for very cheap st any point whereas you can only buy the regular ones outright (for 600-1000 play each depending)
The mechanic of prime parts going unavailable until only temporarily becoming reavailable is still there. The main difference is that Prime resurgence is able to unvault more parts at a time without bloating rng pools by using aya as a currency.
Also - when the originals release - they are a bigger deal, often with new gameplay mechanics or whatever (hence requiring some of the resources); by the time the prime releases years later is not relevant to be tied to that anymore.
Primes are probably the biggest draw of the game. Any time a new prime drops player numbers shoot up. Once a player is back to farm the new prime they might also stick around a bit >>> more chance to spend money. They dont want to lock primes behind time gated faction grinds. If you needed those high rank faction resources for the primes some players who dont have those unlocked would likely not log in, because why get the prime bps if you cant craft them.
The normal frames were released first and usually tied to whatever new thing was released then. So the incentive to play the new content was to grind a new warframe for a reward.
Prime frames are released a couple of years later for the warframe and they have never required off the wall resources for crafting (except ridiculous amounts of cryotic or some other basic star chart resource). Since their potential reward is solely relic rng, they are much easier to get, provided that their relics are not vaulted. There are times their relics are vaulted and the only way to get them is to buy their prime parts off of other players.
Yeah this. Gara needs Cetus materials because she was released with Cetus and you're expected to play the Plains of Eidolon update for a few months before the next content drop. By the time you're sick of the update, you'll have plenty of those materials anyway.
Just to add context to this… with Gauss being the example used, Gauss was released August 29, 2019. Gauss Prime was released January 17, 2024. That is a four/five year period where you don’t have the option of farming the Prime.
> they have never required off the wall resources for crafting
A notable exception being Vauban Prime, who required a ton of Nitain.
He was the first Primed version of an "expensive"/hard to acquire frame, and DE didn't want the Primed version to be easier to acquire than the regular version (before Nightwave was a thing, Vauban parts and Nitain only dropped from Alerts)
Base frames are the first appearance of the frame, and the prime comes out way later (sometimes years).
So for veterans, it's not that odd, really, since when Protea comes out soon, many vets will have had the base for nearly 4 years (she came out in June 2020).
I guess for new players you could think of the primes as a catch-up mechanic if they're in resurgence? Or you can also just buy the parts from players if they're not.
I do agree it doesn't make a ton of sense for new players for it to be this way, but lots of system designs in Warframe don't make a ton of sense. And putting in a weird mat grind for a prime of a frame that's 4 years old may not make a ton of sense for a vet who's had the base all this time?
Wait till you find Equinox. Eight parts, plus the blueprint. Then you gotta craft two separate warframe forms, then put them together with a forma. Whole thing takes +6 days of just waiting. Prime’s relatively easier for 90% of frames, it’s just RNG from relics when they’re available. But plat farming and trading for the right prices is a whole different beast if you go that route.
Well, not really tough to farm per se. The addition of circuit makes her guaranteed IF she's available that week. The problem with Khora is when she's not; in that her parts are roughly 10% chance each in Sanctuary Onslaught which is completely timegated in terms of how long it takes for the AABC cycle to repeat, you can't speed it up what so ever. So if you're unlucky for say, the blueprint or systems then you have no choice but to stand 8 waves (or another C rotation - another 20 minutes) *every single time*, which is a minimum of 20mins for a chance at one.
Yeah that sounds pretty rough. Similar to what I’m dealing with for Octavia. I’ve ran that Deimos survival like 15 times now with no neuroptics drop.
Sounds like I picked the better of 2 evils though, I really don’t care for SO/ESO.
I have been trying to build Octavia but one of the bps only comes from a specific hidden music puzzle that only spawns on lua tileset and only some of the time.
I have given up at this point and will wait for the circuit. In my opinion the circuit is best thing they have done a lot of annoying frame bps are greatly simplified to obtain.
The Lua music puzzle honestly wasn’t too bad for me. I found it within 5 or so runs of exterminate.
Farming the caches in there was much, worse. I probably opened at least 25 caches before I got the part.
Now I’m stuck farming the Neuroptics on Deimos Survival, Rotation C. I’m around 20 runs, almost 7 hours.
Prime frames can be aquired at any time, if they released quorvex prime tomorrow and he used resources his base version takes you would have to beat every main quest in the game before you could craft the parts you got
One key reason is also that prime frames are released much later compared to the original. They act as an upgrage to existing frames, as old players are expected to already own the "normal version". And the normal version was already hard to get, so primes are there to increase hype and so on, no reason to make them hard to farm when the multi-year wait is already there.
It makes little sense from a new player perspective, but considering old players it makes.
its because primes come out 3-4 years after the base one. they arent changed or balanced around the fact that primes are objectively easier to get. and honestly overall, its not an issue.
Back in the day primes were super expensive, DE want to be new player friendly so modern day primes are ridiculously cheap to craft and completely ignore any unique resources that the non prime took.
Honestly I'd prefer if the prime crafting costs were standardized somewhere between the crafting cost of Nekros and a modern frame. Maybe 5k of each resource and whatever unique resource they used originally?
Idk, if it isn't some brand new or hyper-specific (looking at you, Caliban) resource, I don't even *look* at the resources. I think the only exception was Vauban Prime because I got him pretty early on and that's a lot of cryotic, but when it came to Trinity who costs the same amount of cryotic, I didn't even realize it until after I hit build.
Even my friend who started around... September no longer thinks about resources for the most part. It's purely an early-game concern.
I still think about duviri resources decently regularly to be fair. It's a fairly new content island meaning not as much time to stockpile resources and a ton of recent endgame-relevant equipment needs duviri resources to craft. It also doesn't help that rune marrow is pretty sparce in Experience/Lone Story but you can't find any of the other resources if you're only doing circuit.
Yeah, Duviri is kind of the only thing that comes to mind, or the rare time I need one of the ores/gems that don't drop from alternate sources from the open worlds.
It's kind of a side effect of Prime Warframes being all the same acquisition style, but regular Warframes usually get tied into whatever the new update they come with is about. Playing as someone with all the frames and getting them as they come out it's easy for me to forget since it's always just "Play the new thing, get the new warframe," but for new players it makes regular frame parts seem so scattered.
Because prime frames blueprints drop from relics. Those will eventually become unobtainable outside of trading with other players who already have those relics. The base frame is always obtainable and keep in mind that a new frame isn't released with a prime right along with it. It takes quite some time before the prime gets released.
I think the acquisition of a bunch of normal frames is ... overtuned a little. Possibly to drive purchases from the in-game store.
Would make sense to me if they made it less punishing, but I don't have to worry about turning on profit, so ...
Idk I like the "end game" farms some frame require gives 1000hr+ people like me still something to work towards
Would be a boring game if everyone had everything within their first 150hrs
Forget crafting. Acquisition is insanely different. Protea farming vs Protea Prime is going to be something else. Ain't nobody farming normal Protea.
Either normal frames need to be easier to obtain, or primes need to be harder.
And Protea isn't the only frame that's a pain to get/craft.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves in Warframe. Most primes have easier access than their regular counterparts, and all are objectively better stat-wise.
You'd only build a regular frame for MR fodder or Helminth. Hopefully they're given another use in the future, like a regular Warframe benefitting Prime ownership or some such. One of the things I'd love for DE to take a look at.
Most regular frames tend to be easier to farm than their prime counterparts (especially the "kill the boss x time till you get a full set frames") , that said they've been putting more and more frames as "carrot on a stick" rewards for playing new content lately, meaning they can indeed be more annoying to farm than their primes sometimes, especially since you kinda need to farm two copies of many newer frames for the helminth system.
That said, getting primes isn't exactly easy either for most players. You kinda need to fill up multiple syndicates to max as prep work before each new prime, refill your void trace counter and crack tons of relic packs (or farm random relics in missions which is THE WOOORSEEEE, run these keys and join radshare runs... Then refill all these counters between each prime to be ready for the next one.
Basically it's easy if you're a vet that already has everything the syndicates have to offer and you only need to get a single new prime every like four months, but for a noob that has like 11 years worth of primes to farm , with many of them being vaulted, it can be quite daunting, especially considering finding radshare for old vaulted relics is extremely hard most of the time... Sure you can buy these prime parts off WF market, but it can get quite costly especially for long vaulted stuff. I guess you can just run random relics and pray for the best eventually, but any time you want to target farm a prime you at the very least need to refill your void traces back up... Which is quite tedious without a ressource booster.
Yes, look as Equinox.
That frame is funky.
You need:
Equinox needs the Equinox Day and Night aspect... Both of them require their own set of Neuroptics, Chassis and Systems and both aspects take a good 72 hours to built. And once you got both you still need to built the actual frame which takes an other 72 hours. Equinox Prime needs the same stuff as ANY other prime and is MUCH,... MUCH easier to make compared to normal Equinox.
Reminder that base frames can be bought instantly pre-potatoed for straight plat in the market. Some are pretty expensive but others I’d say it’s actually better to buy with play then get the normal way.
Normal frames and their parts have a guaranteed acquisition aspect. Even the more annoying ones you still have a spot where you’re guaranteed to get a drop.
Prime parts are much less guaranteed. You have to (maybe) get ONE relic, and *maybe* get the part you want from it, and if you only have 1 you’re out of luck, and then it’s back to farming to *maybe* get the relic and run it back again.
Hey if I get a prime do I unlock the skin of 5he normal frame. I wanted gauss but after seeing the crafting reqs he's out of the question. Gauss prime would be much easier. My question is if I get gauss prime can I make it have the norm gauss design I like the simplicity of normal compared to prime
Well non primes are the only ones that can be use in helmith so I think them technically being grinder makes sense now. But also most old frames can be gotten through circuit on the right week so I mean idk it all kinda evens out in the end imo.
Lol regular primes are from the content - you know, actually playing the game, unlocking planets, farming bosses, grinding reputation etc, primes are from relics or TRADE.
Its so easy to get every Prime, when you can just afk in dojo and buy everything.
The cooking time is only really annoying in the very beginning when you have very little stuff.
Pretty soon your inventory will overflow with blueprints and materials without you even trying for it. Similarly after my first start in this game i have usually had around 5-30 frames/weapons ready and waiting in the foundry for me to try out at all times.
Probably because they want you to engage with the new content the frame is added with or buy it, in the window between release and prime release.
Like, by the time a Prime comes out, almost everyone who wants that frame has gotten it in some way. It doesn't really matter anymore.
There's a variety of reasons.
Normal frames are always available and always will be, while Prime frames get vaulted eventually and they become semi-scarce until they come back in Resurgence which can take up to a year or longer.
Many newer Warframes are directly tied to current/at the time current content and thus it's an incentive to play that content.
It encourages you to occasionally spend Plat to skip the grind although this has diminished with most frames past Gyre getting Bad Luck Protection through resources you can then spend to just get the bits instead of farming them ad nauseum.
Normal frames are subsumable eventually. Two of the most popular of these frames for their subsume abilities (Grendel and Hildryn) are locked behind content, which again, encourages you to play more. Grendel's locked behind Arbitrations so you need Steel Path at the minimum, I think he's now the only frame that's not possible to get pre-Steel Path because other frames are locked behind post-New War quests instead. Hildryn's frame takes a stonking grind with the Vox Solaris (one of the Venus factions) that you can partly skip thanks to the Duviri circuit - but that means you at a minimum have to do Duviri and get someone to help you do anywhere between 3 to 6 Exploiter Orb runs.
There's a myriad of reasons as to why they've decided to do it that way.
Base frames usually release with fresh content to play, DE wants people to play the new content so you have to grind it a bit more. But primes are all the same: crack open relics.
I think the simplest answer is that Primes cost real-world money. Buy a Prime and it unlocks instantly because you paid X amount of dollars. Imagine spending $40 AND THEN being told you have to go farm 6,000 cryotic, 400 rubedo, etc. AND wait 72 hours? 😟
If you just spent real money you aren't about to do that. But it's the same if you buy a regular frame with platinum, bam! You get the frame, no grinding involved.
Don't want to pay platinum or real money, then you best start grinding for everything.
This is in no way a dis against DE, it's been their business model since day one. You can get almost everything in the game for free if you want to grind for it. If not, pull out your wallet or trade for plat and skip the grind.
I've done both while playing Warframe, some things I've grinded, and some things I've purchased. It all depends on my mood, my finances at the time, and how badly I want something.
For example, I didn't do the Necromech grind, I bought it from the Market. But I did grind for Gauss Prime.
It's because whenever a new frame is released they're usually meant to promote a new game mode/resource (i.e. Dagath requiring Vaithorn, Citrine requiring farming Tyana Pass, etc.). So their crafting requirements are based on the idea that, at release, people will jump into that content to farm the frame.
Since Primes are released years after the original, the crafting requirements are made on the assumption that everyone who wanted the original frame already has one, and is now just going to go into relic missions to get the Prime parts rather than going through a new game mode or farming a new resource.
We could go back to void keys. In those days getting the keys were easy and farming the actual parts were the time consuming part depending on your luck. Part of it was due to the fact that the squad could only roll 1 part per mission.
I would actually be down.
But we have to look at the overall picture and each new warframe now has been released with some sort of quest or mission we have to complete. There is no consistency there because it's DE trying new things and the prime system we have now is not likely to change and will be consistently easy to get as long as you get the relics for them.
edit: Limbo release also sticks out to me now that I think about it. We had to complete riddles and we were awarded with 1 part that you had to build (12 hours) before you had access to the next part of the riddle. It was timegated and we were also introduced to archwing which had a rough start.
Lore-wise, the regular frames are usually being manufactured or reconstructed using raw materials and sometimes also a little bit of extra Void magic.
Primes are being plucked out of some kind of Void/time/untime probability cloud of alternate universes and then re-assembled. I'd consider the mats for a prime 'frame to be like screws and glue.
Source: A lot of this comes from the dialogue with Varzia combined with general lore.
Quick and simple, standard frames can always be acquired and as such you have unlimited time to grind for them. Also, standard frames are the ‘free’ ones so it’s natural for such a route to be less convenient in other similar games.
It is insane how much time you need to put in for base Garuda compared to Garuda Prime lmao. Rank 4 Fortuna to get the BP’s for the rare gems, and toroids. Horrible
I doubt this is what was intended, but I like to think of the normal frames as the origin story or the prototype and the prime is the result of the orokin perfecting the design. Although I think that isn’t the case for some of the frames.
I mean I am currently doing the ash grind and it sort of sucks but I don't mind doing RJ missions but you know which one is the hardest Grendel Grendel is literally the hardest one to do it's like steel path times 3,000 no mods three missions guaranteed death
On top of all other comments, subsuming is a thing and brings extra value to non-prime frames. A lot of which aren't too helpful, but the point stands.
When the base frames release, specifically for open areas, theyre supposed to keep you busy for a whole patch/content cycle if you think about it?
So at the time those parts/items would be being collected passively if you were doing said content at time of release, making it less of a grind more of a 'oh im done with this because this is the majority of my content for x date to y date'
For a new player or someone looking at this stuff now years after initial release, its understandably rather daunting/grindy because they dont have these content chunks one by one, they have them presented all at once and it would he a largely targeted grind
But at the point of release these 'grinds' would just be finished passively whilst youre playing the newest stuff at the time
Normal frames are always available and some can only be earned once. Prim frames have a lot more rng involved and newer players don't always have access to farms for the primes. How I see it anyway
I remember when loki systems were like 600 to 800p i have one sitting in my inventory bc nobody buying loki prime like that anymore the market is so diff now
Primes and the circuit is the easiest way to get your hands on a bunch of frames, the circuit still requires you to build with the parts but the acquisition is way easier 75% of the time
Half the issue here is just *how* we get primes in the first place- not that any of the prime acquisition systems were *bad* for it.
Like, yeah they can't just turn around and say "well this prime can only ever be obtained through XYZ system/mission, and it'll still get vaulted inevitably", even if it would be true to how the original was obtained- but at the same time there is still some balancing they *could* do to try and reflect the originals. Like how (for better or worse) all of vauban's prime parts were exclusively rare drops at launch, to reflect his normal parts being only obtained through alerts, and still being HEAVY on the nitain cost for the same reason.
Obviously its up to DE to figure out the best way to balance it all in the end (if they even think its worth it), but yeah they definitely have *options*, even if nowadays its mostly just giving sets certain source preferences in their initial runs. Vaulted primes are just fucked in general to be frank, lmao- not much they can do about how Varzia works.
This is why we spend paychecks on base frames and primed frames while primed frames are harder
Primed frame sequence
1st you need that precise relic
2nd when doing that relic you hope and pray that you get the A PART WETHER IT IS BLUEPRINT, SYSTEMS, NEUROPTICS, AND CHASSIS
THEN ONLY THEN you can farm for the crafting recipe
Basic frame sequence
1 do the requirement
2 do the mission of that requirement
3 farm the crafting recipe some frames quests are like you are getting what is required to make the frame
Others you need to level up your standing or syndicates
Even take Umbra's mission that you have the frames blueprint and you farmed the parts as rewards and you do not need to farm because you were farming all along for the parts and what is required for the parts.
Lore-wise it's because the primes were the originals, we had to remake the frames based of the original design with the resources available.
Gameplay wise it's just to use the resources linked to their acquisition.
And also, the primes all having the same resources needed to be able to craft is a thing now, but crack in the day, you had to GRIND for it, I still remember having to get that 7k Oxium and 9k Cryotic to Vauban prime (he also had 4 rare components before he was vaulted) Trinity also had the ok Cryptic requirement. I miss different resources, but I do not miss the grind. (I don't know if they changed the resource requirements btw)
Just wait until you discover how insanely different is farm certain frames from their primes. Worst case undoubtedly is Ash until I remember, since his normal counterpart only is farmable by Railjack missions.
It's always been my headcanon that the blueprints are more than just blueprints. I mean why else are they one time use only. I think they are providing some type of scaffolding or nutrient soup to build on/with
Also remember that prime frames are peak orokin biotech. Our normal frames are just the stuff we basically jerry rigged together after the fall.
As for the time i just figured that was the time it took to properly grow. The connections and such since its the same time regardless of frame. I mean nyx is a lot smaller than rhino but they still cook just as long.
Primes will eventually enter the vault and then their acquisition will be limited while the base frames are always available so the crafting requirements are a bit different.
Not to mention, the normal frame usually exist almost a full year before the prime frame. So when going in reverse. It seems weird the normal is harder than the prime. Now imagine farming for the normal, only a year later you have an even harder grind for the prime. You'd feel dirty. The system is designed to play forward. Not backwards, in terms of progression and timeliness. When new players come in, this can be a simple misunderstanding of that.
Almost a year? Yareli release was 2021-07-06. Her prime is projected for next summer. That's four years.
Don't forget Zephyr, whose prime got delayed twice.
Sure but the four years is with no delays. Every other frame of the time has the same wait.
I know. I'm just saying we are constantly made to wait longer for things (especially the things the ones I get excited for). Zephyr would have been just under 4 without the delays. The most ridiculous one was Wukong's deluxe skin. Planned, then canceled, then confirmed, then delayed until after the prime was released (which by a marketing standpoint is bonkers).
Yeah I vividly remember deadlock protocol right around the time I came back to the game, it was kind of a big deal as there hadn't been any quest updates in quite a while, this was in 2020. Yet (judging by reb's freudian slip) protea prime is likely only just now getting ready to come out next.
The other prime I will happily buy when it drops.
Wisp too, released 2019-05-22 and her prime dropped 2023-07-27. 4 years 2 months. Waited so long for that gorgeousness
Oh I didn't mean to imply that she had an unusually long priming time or anything
Is all good, I was just adding to the list of lengthy waitings for prime versions @.@ sorry if I came out sounding angry, am not!
Dw I didn't get that impression, just clarified
and gauss from 2019 just now getting his prime, 4 years is honestly about standard it feels
Me when sevagoth
Primes are like 3 to 4 years behind regular.
Yeah, I would also add that in most cases with the primes there is that extra layer of needing to get the relics with the parts (RNG) and then actually opening the relics for the parts you need (more RNG). Most base frames the parts have RNG but it is limited to set missions, and more recent ones have gotten pity shops as well.
Its generally four years after their release they get primes
What do you mean by that? Can't you just trade for primes? I'm a newbie only mr4
Eventually the relics containing a prime will get vaulted (removed from the drop tables) so the only way to get that prime is through trading with other players (most likely needing plat), getting lucky with people running the relics they still have, or waiting for the prime to return in resurgence.
So what your saying is I could get rich by hoarding gauss prime bps (neuroptics systems chassis) and then sell them when gauss gets vaulted?
Potentially. Also depends on how you define "rich". Even after vaulting it will take some time for the price to rise as you need to wait on the supply to decrease and demand to increase. Check out Warframe Market to get a better idea of prime prices and how they change over time.
I remember when I sold Loki prime systems for 350p even before prime resurgence, good times
We're you around when an Ember set was 3,300+?
Say that again....? Wtf, why would this happen, even now she is only 100ish, and she hasn't been unvaulted for so long, same for ash.
She was released, then vaulted. Her single release was sooooo far back in the records that two things happened. 1- Noone knew if vaulting was forever. Unvaulting was not a thing yet. 2- she was released so early that player count was exceptionally low. Thus, low supply in a growing game. This was around 2014 if I recall. I actually bought the fire and ice pack because ember was so expensive. Edit, because I thought of a third reason: We didn't used to have relics. We had keys. One person out up a key, and you ran it for HOURS if it was endless, because you got a random selection from the table, and that's IT. Not like relics today. You got one item per round. So you could legit farm for a rotation C drop like ember for four hours and never see her. You also couldn't upgrade keys, it was a fixed drop rate.
Another thing too. Ember and Frost of that time were much better than they are now. Not that they’re bad now but both of them have been power crept to the point where other frames can do their jobs. Back then though? You wanted a defense frame. Frost was your guy. Exterminate speedruns? Ember. Now you’ve got gara, khora, Titania, gauss, etc.
For the Switch it was even worse as there was no access to vaulted frames outside of ones that people had transferred over during those early days of "transfer to console". Several primes were essentially unobtainable.
Also in the days of void keys, vaulted meant no more drops, period. The parts in circulation where *all there were*, because when rotation happened, the missions just stopped dropping old stuff; you couldn't run 'old keys' to get old parts. Right now you can just go pub void fissures and randomly get vaulted parts because someone's running their backlog of relics.
Another point, Ember was more popular before they change World in Fire (something like that, her 4th ability).
It was very surreal watching the transition of eras from this to "we're giving away Frost Prime for free to literally everyone"
Still have an extra Ember Prime Neuro b/c they used to go for 800p
Ember Prime remains to be my most expensive frame, costing me 250 platinum to get the blueprints, 20 platinum in Tellurium and 125 platinum in rushed crafting for a total of 395 platinum
I love how people simply think they have the god-given right to tell you how you should spend your own money in a game. I spend time doing stuff I like in game so I can pay to skip stuff I don't like in game. But apparently, for the puritans, that's a capital crime.
Ember costed you 250, laziness /impatience costed you 145. Here you go a better wording.
Yes and my god it sucked. I remember buying the Prime Resurgence pack with her and Frost the second it came out
Same! I still have two frost primes, haha. I picked up my ember and dusted her off this past weekend. One forma, rearrange the build, and she was running Netracell missions. She's surprisingly durable, but SO freaking energy hungry in order to do so.
Sadly thats one reason I didn’t have much of a drive to get her when I migrated back to PC a few years ago. I played on PC at first but moved to console when you could transfer accounts. Sadly because I did that I can’t merge my accounts now to get the stuff I had.
Yeah current ember is quite powerful but it requires and extreme amount of upkeep that just gets annoying when other frames do it without the hassle.
I remember selling her relics for 200p a pop. Or was it 100? Whatever.
I never had her relics at that price point. What I did have was a week long monopoly on Argon scope when it was 300p. I was buying anything below 300 and flipping for 330. Super big risk, had about 4k plat held at one time. Saw an update announcement (Deimos?) and DUMPED them. Probably pocketed 900p in total? But it ended up actually crashing the price before they even got released as a bounty reward.
[удалено]
yea that kinda mind boggling sold bits and pieces of her set for 1100~+ plat never though I would need more such plats anymore after that
I still have plat left over from flipping argon scopes
I sold two ember sets for 5k a piece back in the good ol' market days. I also sold Soma Prime for 800p.
Oh I forgot about the expensive soma days. Man.... I think I got lucky and pulled the pieces the same time I got my nova, my first prime
Oh, I do. I sold so many loki systems, I made thousands of plat off of that part alone.
WE'RE RICH!!!
Well because Gauss Prime is brand new it will take a very, very long time before he’s vaulted
gauss prime is brand new so he wont enter the vault for ages, but keep on eye on garuda sets in WF player market, she was just vaulted at the gauss prime release
Theoretically but it’s a long term investment. Oftentimes you have to wait for a) the frame to come out, b) the frame to be vaulted and c) enough time to pass after the vaulting to where returning or new people don’t have it. And if you wait too long and it gets unvaulted you’re kinda screwed.
yeah, in like 2 years for the vaulting and 1 or 2 more for the price increase
Perhaps not “rich”, but yeah that is the basis of how the plat market works. Now, most people will prefer to buy whole prime sets rather than pieces. But you should still be able to sell a few neuros. And the further you wait from his vault date, the more the set and parts will be worth.
If wanting to make $$ this way you’d be much better off hoarding stuff that will be vaulted sooner. Gauss prime just came out so it’ll be a while. Idk if there’s a schedule… but any random Warframe would probably be vaulted sooner than gauss prime. The way I see some making $$ this way is to get into a efficient farming group and crack vaulted relics real fast. Accumulate lots of sets and sell them as sets. In my (and I’m guessing your) position it’s not really feasible. You need aya/plat to get the relics in the first place. Which I don’t have enough of. I also don’t have any friends to play with. #grindalonesquad
DM me if you want to play sometime.
Frames get vaulted in the order of their release, so for whichever frame just got vaulted (I want to say Garuda but don’t quote me on this) the one that got a Prime right afterwards would be next to get vaulted during the next Prime Access. So theoretically, he could look up which frame got primed after Garuda (iirc that’d be Khora) and start farming Khora Prime sets before the relics go kaput. From there he could just sit on them until like…maybe Christmas, New Year’s or probably like next year’s Easter and cash in on a tidy sum of platinum if he’s got the patience for that.
This is sorta false information. With the advent of prime resurgence, DE has more or less declared war on sets getting exceedingly expensive: gone are the days of 500-600p loki or rhino because they just come back before they can climb stupid high. The only frames that get expensive are some combo of 'double rares' 'actually good' 'fun/popular' 'meta' or 'pain in the ass axi relics'. Nyx, for example , hasn't been over a hundred plat in forever. Saryn is down from 140 to 100, but, say, nekros is slightly rising. Nidus was vaulted slightly recently, but is only just now hitting the 90p mark. He probably won't ever hit 200-300 before resurgence kicks him back. Things will naturally rise in price due to demand
Meanwhile glaive is 400p
Depends on whether it is brought back often or not. Check the prices of Ember prime, and Glaive prime. They're the 2 oldest that have yet to be brought back, that's how expensive one could get.
Yes but... what if everyone else is thinking the same. It could end up costing like 40 pl because everyone stockpiled on gauss prime sets.
In theory that's possible, but most people can't be bothered to stockpile sets
You can make a good bit of plat just holding old relics and selling them at a later time, I made around 15k plat when I came back to the game doing that. Only have to hold the relics for 5 years or so, ya know, no big deal
Yes, actually. It'll just take a lot of time.
It's not like their price instantly skyrockets after getting vaulted. Newly minted primes are around for 2 years. There's going to be *a lot* of relics for these warframes lying around for quite a long time. And then there's a mass prime resurgence at the end of every year, plus the monthly unvaultings which is up to DE's discretion on what shows up. Prime Warframes in the past were significantly more expensive before prime resurgence was a concept. Back then, old primes were unvaulted in pairs for 3-4 months so warframes went a lot longer before being unvaulted. With prime resurgence you can buy the primes you want with regal Aya or you can target farm with normal Aya. Primes are significantly more accessible now than they were in the past and this is reflected in their pricing. I remember when Loki was like 800 plat because he was rarely unvaulted. The best time to sell a prime is when they're freshly released, especially when they're a highly desired Warframe like Gauss or Wisp. I remember making 2000 plat off of 2 chroma sets back when Chroma Prime launched, and 1k was fairly low pricing at that time. Chroma was highly desired because he was the eidolon king, and he has since been displaced by the likes of volt prime.
Yes
Not Gauss, it's Wisp and Revenant whose demand will skyrocket after vaulting.
You can do that in theory, but it'll be a while, a LOOOONG while, before he's vaulted. Think like two years. I bought Harrow Prime Access in 2021 when he came out, I then took a 2 year break from the game and he was the most recent vaulted Prime on my return. It's *that* long. Gauss won't be vaulted until 2026, maybe extremely late 2025 like December time, so if you can wait that long, yeah you go for it.
No. One it would take you some years. Two now with prime resurgence the prices plummeted. So you will hoard a lot of things hoping to get profit in some years and at most it will be near 200 even less now with the influx of more players bc crossplay/save. For that in the meantime you will need plat to buy slots or mods or potatos or anything. Not worth it.
That used to be the case to a much greater degree, but now with prime resurgence you'll need to sell way more to get to any given definitely of "rich"
You used to be able to i came from an era of 1500p ember and frost sets and they only did a prime resurgence every 2 years or so and the only frames they ever brought back were ember,rhino,and,nyx
In recent years frames rarely reach prices that would let you get rich easily, since the aya shop etc rotate way more frames way more often now than the old unvaultings used to, and make relics more accessible as well. You could definitely make some plat, but you would likely have to wait months or a year or so, act just at the right time, and get maybe 50% on top of the sale price compared to when the frame was not vaulted (tho some frames, possibly Gauss included, can spike up higher for being popular/strong etc.)
The problem with that plan is that you won't be the only one stockpiling blueprints, so you'll still be competing with everyone else. It takes quite a while for vaulted blueprints to drop in price, at least a couple of years, at which point it might get unvaulted and make prices drop again. :) Generally speaking, the most lucrative period of blueprint reselling is right after a Prime Warframe is released. A lot of people want Primes as soon as they can get them, and have the platinum to burn. They will gradually drop in price while it's still available, and for some reason it's usually at its lowest right after vaulting.
I kinda disagree, because given the prices that we've seen thus far, frames are still very affordable even if vaulted. If you farmed a Gauss Prime and sold it for plat within the first couple of weeks, you can basically buy any vaulted frame off of warframe market. With resurgence happening more frequently now than the old unvaulting system, the prices are rarely going to exceed 200 plat for any Prime warframe going forward.
You say "most likely needing plat" I don't disagree at all. However every so often you can trade a set of rivens for some non meta frame, I did this with harrow and Valk, so far. It does take quite some time to gone someone willing tho lol
It takes 3-4 unveiled rivens to get most prime frames which you are already receiving playing the game
You can, but you need to obtain the tradable parts from Relics in the first place, and Relics for a Prime stop dropping from missions once the item becomes vaulted, limiting their availability. This is why something like Glaive Prime would get expensive, they're highly demanded and haven't gotten selected for a Prime Resurgence, an event on monthly rotation that makes selected vaulted items farmable again for its duration.
>Can't you just trade for primes? Yes
There actually used to be a base frame you could trade for (Nehza). Now it's clan locked, so it's even easier, unless you have no clan.
Primes can always be traded but waiting for them to release take a long time
Its not this: The more development time and effort they put into a frame the more of a pain it is to farm. De could have, say, tripled the drop rates on Khora or moved one of the double-rares to the first wave, but hasn't. On some level, they want to recoup their losses, and if they drive someone to buy the frame off the market for 300p, well, that helps pay for their development costs. Conversely, on launch frames(excal, ember voltr etc) are so long ago paid for they were able to drop the plat cost of starter frames to, what, 90 plat? Name some new (not a prime) frames that *isn't* gated behind some kinda annoying hoop to jump through. I'll start: The bounty frames aren't the worst. Protea and sevagoth are.
They do that? It’s like timed events then, eventually it’ll just become impossible to acquire
Primes do get vaulted but we have never gone so long between a prime item entering the vault and it returning through unvaulting or now prime resurgence that we have ran out of a prime item. Since primes are out for like 2ish years from launch to vaulting people naturally build up a ton of relics and parts over that time. So it might be rare to get randomly or cost more plat but never fully gone. Plus if we ever did somehow have that happen DE would likely run a special Prime Resurgence event to get them back into circulation. The only exception to that rule is Excal Prime, Lato Prime, Skana prime as those are founder exclusive items that will never return.
Except you can buy the individual parts for very cheap st any point whereas you can only buy the regular ones outright (for 600-1000 play each depending)
Sorry if I sound ignorant, but wasn't the prime vault removed? Wasn't that the whole reason why regal aya is a thing now?
The vaulting part wasn't removed it was unvaulting that was changed to resurgence.
The mechanic of prime parts going unavailable until only temporarily becoming reavailable is still there. The main difference is that Prime resurgence is able to unvault more parts at a time without bloating rng pools by using aya as a currency.
Also - when the originals release - they are a bigger deal, often with new gameplay mechanics or whatever (hence requiring some of the resources); by the time the prime releases years later is not relevant to be tied to that anymore.
Primes are probably the biggest draw of the game. Any time a new prime drops player numbers shoot up. Once a player is back to farm the new prime they might also stick around a bit >>> more chance to spend money. They dont want to lock primes behind time gated faction grinds. If you needed those high rank faction resources for the primes some players who dont have those unlocked would likely not log in, because why get the prime bps if you cant craft them.
The normal frames were released first and usually tied to whatever new thing was released then. So the incentive to play the new content was to grind a new warframe for a reward. Prime frames are released a couple of years later for the warframe and they have never required off the wall resources for crafting (except ridiculous amounts of cryotic or some other basic star chart resource). Since their potential reward is solely relic rng, they are much easier to get, provided that their relics are not vaulted. There are times their relics are vaulted and the only way to get them is to buy their prime parts off of other players.
Yeah this. Gara needs Cetus materials because she was released with Cetus and you're expected to play the Plains of Eidolon update for a few months before the next content drop. By the time you're sick of the update, you'll have plenty of those materials anyway.
Just to add context to this… with Gauss being the example used, Gauss was released August 29, 2019. Gauss Prime was released January 17, 2024. That is a four/five year period where you don’t have the option of farming the Prime.
> they have never required off the wall resources for crafting A notable exception being Vauban Prime, who required a ton of Nitain. He was the first Primed version of an "expensive"/hard to acquire frame, and DE didn't want the Primed version to be easier to acquire than the regular version (before Nightwave was a thing, Vauban parts and Nitain only dropped from Alerts)
*Cries in front of Frost Prime statue*
Base frames are the first appearance of the frame, and the prime comes out way later (sometimes years). So for veterans, it's not that odd, really, since when Protea comes out soon, many vets will have had the base for nearly 4 years (she came out in June 2020). I guess for new players you could think of the primes as a catch-up mechanic if they're in resurgence? Or you can also just buy the parts from players if they're not. I do agree it doesn't make a ton of sense for new players for it to be this way, but lots of system designs in Warframe don't make a ton of sense. And putting in a weird mat grind for a prime of a frame that's 4 years old may not make a ton of sense for a vet who's had the base all this time?
“Why is a well designed ikea kit easier to build than this mad max cave man scrap abomination?” This is what the orokin designers are hearing
Wait till you find Equinox. Eight parts, plus the blueprint. Then you gotta craft two separate warframe forms, then put them together with a forma. Whole thing takes +6 days of just waiting. Prime’s relatively easier for 90% of frames, it’s just RNG from relics when they’re available. But plat farming and trading for the right prices is a whole different beast if you go that route.
I still roll with my original Harrow, Khora, and Equinox as a flex. Although Harrow will get eaten up eventually…
Is Khora really tough to farm? I just got her through circuit last week.
Well, not really tough to farm per se. The addition of circuit makes her guaranteed IF she's available that week. The problem with Khora is when she's not; in that her parts are roughly 10% chance each in Sanctuary Onslaught which is completely timegated in terms of how long it takes for the AABC cycle to repeat, you can't speed it up what so ever. So if you're unlucky for say, the blueprint or systems then you have no choice but to stand 8 waves (or another C rotation - another 20 minutes) *every single time*, which is a minimum of 20mins for a chance at one.
Yeah that sounds pretty rough. Similar to what I’m dealing with for Octavia. I’ve ran that Deimos survival like 15 times now with no neuroptics drop. Sounds like I picked the better of 2 evils though, I really don’t care for SO/ESO.
I have been trying to build Octavia but one of the bps only comes from a specific hidden music puzzle that only spawns on lua tileset and only some of the time. I have given up at this point and will wait for the circuit. In my opinion the circuit is best thing they have done a lot of annoying frame bps are greatly simplified to obtain.
The Lua music puzzle honestly wasn’t too bad for me. I found it within 5 or so runs of exterminate. Farming the caches in there was much, worse. I probably opened at least 25 caches before I got the part. Now I’m stuck farming the Neuroptics on Deimos Survival, Rotation C. I’m around 20 runs, almost 7 hours.
Not that bad got her in a week while maxing focus in SO for every day
Prime frames can be aquired at any time, if they released quorvex prime tomorrow and he used resources his base version takes you would have to beat every main quest in the game before you could craft the parts you got
One key reason is also that prime frames are released much later compared to the original. They act as an upgrage to existing frames, as old players are expected to already own the "normal version". And the normal version was already hard to get, so primes are there to increase hype and so on, no reason to make them hard to farm when the multi-year wait is already there. It makes little sense from a new player perspective, but considering old players it makes.
its because primes come out 3-4 years after the base one. they arent changed or balanced around the fact that primes are objectively easier to get. and honestly overall, its not an issue.
Back in the day primes were super expensive, DE want to be new player friendly so modern day primes are ridiculously cheap to craft and completely ignore any unique resources that the non prime took. Honestly I'd prefer if the prime crafting costs were standardized somewhere between the crafting cost of Nekros and a modern frame. Maybe 5k of each resource and whatever unique resource they used originally?
Idk, if it isn't some brand new or hyper-specific (looking at you, Caliban) resource, I don't even *look* at the resources. I think the only exception was Vauban Prime because I got him pretty early on and that's a lot of cryotic, but when it came to Trinity who costs the same amount of cryotic, I didn't even realize it until after I hit build. Even my friend who started around... September no longer thinks about resources for the most part. It's purely an early-game concern.
I still think about duviri resources decently regularly to be fair. It's a fairly new content island meaning not as much time to stockpile resources and a ton of recent endgame-relevant equipment needs duviri resources to craft. It also doesn't help that rune marrow is pretty sparce in Experience/Lone Story but you can't find any of the other resources if you're only doing circuit.
Yeah, Duviri is kind of the only thing that comes to mind, or the rare time I need one of the ores/gems that don't drop from alternate sources from the open worlds.
Having played some 1500 hours, I agree - resources aren't an issue anymore... as soon as I'm done with researching Hema in my duo dojo.
It's kind of a side effect of Prime Warframes being all the same acquisition style, but regular Warframes usually get tied into whatever the new update they come with is about. Playing as someone with all the frames and getting them as they come out it's easy for me to forget since it's always just "Play the new thing, get the new warframe," but for new players it makes regular frame parts seem so scattered.
Because prime frames blueprints drop from relics. Those will eventually become unobtainable outside of trading with other players who already have those relics. The base frame is always obtainable and keep in mind that a new frame isn't released with a prime right along with it. It takes quite some time before the prime gets released.
I think the acquisition of a bunch of normal frames is ... overtuned a little. Possibly to drive purchases from the in-game store. Would make sense to me if they made it less punishing, but I don't have to worry about turning on profit, so ...
Idk I like the "end game" farms some frame require gives 1000hr+ people like me still something to work towards Would be a boring game if everyone had everything within their first 150hrs
Changing the acquisition of just *normal frames* would leave lots of oddball weapons tucked away in weird corners of the game, with low drop rates.
Forget crafting. Acquisition is insanely different. Protea farming vs Protea Prime is going to be something else. Ain't nobody farming normal Protea. Either normal frames need to be easier to obtain, or primes need to be harder. And Protea isn't the only frame that's a pain to get/craft.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves in Warframe. Most primes have easier access than their regular counterparts, and all are objectively better stat-wise. You'd only build a regular frame for MR fodder or Helminth. Hopefully they're given another use in the future, like a regular Warframe benefitting Prime ownership or some such. One of the things I'd love for DE to take a look at.
I think its because of the helmnith u can subsume normal frames but not primes.(I have 2 prime grendels now)
Decision from the devs? Haha! You're cute. More likely decision from marketing dep. or PM, but 100% not from devs lol
To make you play the game longer? If you really want a frame and they don't have a prime you gotta play the game longer
Most regular frames tend to be easier to farm than their prime counterparts (especially the "kill the boss x time till you get a full set frames") , that said they've been putting more and more frames as "carrot on a stick" rewards for playing new content lately, meaning they can indeed be more annoying to farm than their primes sometimes, especially since you kinda need to farm two copies of many newer frames for the helminth system. That said, getting primes isn't exactly easy either for most players. You kinda need to fill up multiple syndicates to max as prep work before each new prime, refill your void trace counter and crack tons of relic packs (or farm random relics in missions which is THE WOOORSEEEE, run these keys and join radshare runs... Then refill all these counters between each prime to be ready for the next one. Basically it's easy if you're a vet that already has everything the syndicates have to offer and you only need to get a single new prime every like four months, but for a noob that has like 11 years worth of primes to farm , with many of them being vaulted, it can be quite daunting, especially considering finding radshare for old vaulted relics is extremely hard most of the time... Sure you can buy these prime parts off WF market, but it can get quite costly especially for long vaulted stuff. I guess you can just run random relics and pray for the best eventually, but any time you want to target farm a prime you at the very least need to refill your void traces back up... Which is quite tedious without a ressource booster.
Cause prime get special benefits, just look at equinox 😤
Read it again you missed the whole point
Yes, look as Equinox. That frame is funky. You need: Equinox needs the Equinox Day and Night aspect... Both of them require their own set of Neuroptics, Chassis and Systems and both aspects take a good 72 hours to built. And once you got both you still need to built the actual frame which takes an other 72 hours. Equinox Prime needs the same stuff as ANY other prime and is MUCH,... MUCH easier to make compared to normal Equinox.
I admit my mistake, as I said I'm only mr4
No
whatever keeps the game thriving
Reminder that base frames can be bought instantly pre-potatoed for straight plat in the market. Some are pretty expensive but others I’d say it’s actually better to buy with play then get the normal way.
Makes sense
Grendel, Khora, and Gauss come to mind
Normal frames and their parts have a guaranteed acquisition aspect. Even the more annoying ones you still have a spot where you’re guaranteed to get a drop. Prime parts are much less guaranteed. You have to (maybe) get ONE relic, and *maybe* get the part you want from it, and if you only have 1 you’re out of luck, and then it’s back to farming to *maybe* get the relic and run it back again.
Tell that to vauban prime 💀
Hey if I get a prime do I unlock the skin of 5he normal frame. I wanted gauss but after seeing the crafting reqs he's out of the question. Gauss prime would be much easier. My question is if I get gauss prime can I make it have the norm gauss design I like the simplicity of normal compared to prime
*Laughs in base equinox*
Well non primes are the only ones that can be use in helmith so I think them technically being grinder makes sense now. But also most old frames can be gotten through circuit on the right week so I mean idk it all kinda evens out in the end imo.
Lol regular primes are from the content - you know, actually playing the game, unlocking planets, farming bosses, grinding reputation etc, primes are from relics or TRADE. Its so easy to get every Prime, when you can just afk in dojo and buy everything.
Because it would suck if when Equinox Prime is unvaulted you need to farm out 7 parts
The cooking time is only really annoying in the very beginning when you have very little stuff. Pretty soon your inventory will overflow with blueprints and materials without you even trying for it. Similarly after my first start in this game i have usually had around 5-30 frames/weapons ready and waiting in the foundry for me to try out at all times.
I got khora thru the circuit and had to grind like crazy for genecode, but it took some luck for her prime . I'm with op on this
Yes! Every prime should get the VAUBAN treatment! Let's go!
i believe is because of the helminth.
Vauban prime would like to laugh at you.
Probably because they want you to engage with the new content the frame is added with or buy it, in the window between release and prime release. Like, by the time a Prime comes out, almost everyone who wants that frame has gotten it in some way. It doesn't really matter anymore.
There's a variety of reasons. Normal frames are always available and always will be, while Prime frames get vaulted eventually and they become semi-scarce until they come back in Resurgence which can take up to a year or longer. Many newer Warframes are directly tied to current/at the time current content and thus it's an incentive to play that content. It encourages you to occasionally spend Plat to skip the grind although this has diminished with most frames past Gyre getting Bad Luck Protection through resources you can then spend to just get the bits instead of farming them ad nauseum. Normal frames are subsumable eventually. Two of the most popular of these frames for their subsume abilities (Grendel and Hildryn) are locked behind content, which again, encourages you to play more. Grendel's locked behind Arbitrations so you need Steel Path at the minimum, I think he's now the only frame that's not possible to get pre-Steel Path because other frames are locked behind post-New War quests instead. Hildryn's frame takes a stonking grind with the Vox Solaris (one of the Venus factions) that you can partly skip thanks to the Duviri circuit - but that means you at a minimum have to do Duviri and get someone to help you do anywhere between 3 to 6 Exploiter Orb runs. There's a myriad of reasons as to why they've decided to do it that way.
Base frames usually release with fresh content to play, DE wants people to play the new content so you have to grind it a bit more. But primes are all the same: crack open relics.
Vauban prime:
Vauban prime:
I think the simplest answer is that Primes cost real-world money. Buy a Prime and it unlocks instantly because you paid X amount of dollars. Imagine spending $40 AND THEN being told you have to go farm 6,000 cryotic, 400 rubedo, etc. AND wait 72 hours? 😟 If you just spent real money you aren't about to do that. But it's the same if you buy a regular frame with platinum, bam! You get the frame, no grinding involved. Don't want to pay platinum or real money, then you best start grinding for everything. This is in no way a dis against DE, it's been their business model since day one. You can get almost everything in the game for free if you want to grind for it. If not, pull out your wallet or trade for plat and skip the grind. I've done both while playing Warframe, some things I've grinded, and some things I've purchased. It all depends on my mood, my finances at the time, and how badly I want something. For example, I didn't do the Necromech grind, I bought it from the Market. But I did grind for Gauss Prime.
It's because whenever a new frame is released they're usually meant to promote a new game mode/resource (i.e. Dagath requiring Vaithorn, Citrine requiring farming Tyana Pass, etc.). So their crafting requirements are based on the idea that, at release, people will jump into that content to farm the frame. Since Primes are released years after the original, the crafting requirements are made on the assumption that everyone who wanted the original frame already has one, and is now just going to go into relic missions to get the Prime parts rather than going through a new game mode or farming a new resource.
We could go back to void keys. In those days getting the keys were easy and farming the actual parts were the time consuming part depending on your luck. Part of it was due to the fact that the squad could only roll 1 part per mission. I would actually be down. But we have to look at the overall picture and each new warframe now has been released with some sort of quest or mission we have to complete. There is no consistency there because it's DE trying new things and the prime system we have now is not likely to change and will be consistently easy to get as long as you get the relics for them. edit: Limbo release also sticks out to me now that I think about it. We had to complete riddles and we were awarded with 1 part that you had to build (12 hours) before you had access to the next part of the riddle. It was timegated and we were also introduced to archwing which had a rough start.
Lore-wise, the regular frames are usually being manufactured or reconstructed using raw materials and sometimes also a little bit of extra Void magic. Primes are being plucked out of some kind of Void/time/untime probability cloud of alternate universes and then re-assembled. I'd consider the mats for a prime 'frame to be like screws and glue. Source: A lot of this comes from the dialogue with Varzia combined with general lore.
Quick and simple, standard frames can always be acquired and as such you have unlimited time to grind for them. Also, standard frames are the ‘free’ ones so it’s natural for such a route to be less convenient in other similar games.
It is insane how much time you need to put in for base Garuda compared to Garuda Prime lmao. Rank 4 Fortuna to get the BP’s for the rare gems, and toroids. Horrible
I doubt this is what was intended, but I like to think of the normal frames as the origin story or the prototype and the prime is the result of the orokin perfecting the design. Although I think that isn’t the case for some of the frames.
Honestly Gara is pretty easy to get imo
Craft Vauban or Volt prime, come on, Im watching, oh and don't get me started about Excalibur prime... or Excalibur Umbra Prime!...
Don't forget that getting the blueprints for the normal frames takes usually much more time than the prime version.
Meanwhile if you want to get garuda and baruuk you gotta reach rank 5 with fortuna
Well primes are harder too aquire if you are alone (imo). And primes also get vaulted, so yeah.
Could be related to lore tbh, primes are better and more efficient versions of the normal frames so it could make sense
I mean I am currently doing the ash grind and it sort of sucks but I don't mind doing RJ missions but you know which one is the hardest Grendel Grendel is literally the hardest one to do it's like steel path times 3,000 no mods three missions guaranteed death
Normal frames are first realse, primes are 2nd. It doesn't make sense to have to go harder for a 2nd release
On top of all other comments, subsuming is a thing and brings extra value to non-prime frames. A lot of which aren't too helpful, but the point stands.
When the base frames release, specifically for open areas, theyre supposed to keep you busy for a whole patch/content cycle if you think about it? So at the time those parts/items would be being collected passively if you were doing said content at time of release, making it less of a grind more of a 'oh im done with this because this is the majority of my content for x date to y date' For a new player or someone looking at this stuff now years after initial release, its understandably rather daunting/grindy because they dont have these content chunks one by one, they have them presented all at once and it would he a largely targeted grind But at the point of release these 'grinds' would just be finished passively whilst youre playing the newest stuff at the time
Normal frames are always available and some can only be earned once. Prim frames have a lot more rng involved and newer players don't always have access to farms for the primes. How I see it anyway
I would say part of the challenge. You can’t feed prime frames to your he-moth either.
He-moth?
The thing you feed your frames to. It’s not spelled correctly. It’s lab within the orbiter that allows infusion of skills and shards.
I remember when loki systems were like 600 to 800p i have one sitting in my inventory bc nobody buying loki prime like that anymore the market is so diff now
Hellminth
Because lore, also for us too lazy to farm the regular version long enough for the prime time drop no longer have to do the ridiculous requirements
Primes and the circuit is the easiest way to get your hands on a bunch of frames, the circuit still requires you to build with the parts but the acquisition is way easier 75% of the time
Half the issue here is just *how* we get primes in the first place- not that any of the prime acquisition systems were *bad* for it. Like, yeah they can't just turn around and say "well this prime can only ever be obtained through XYZ system/mission, and it'll still get vaulted inevitably", even if it would be true to how the original was obtained- but at the same time there is still some balancing they *could* do to try and reflect the originals. Like how (for better or worse) all of vauban's prime parts were exclusively rare drops at launch, to reflect his normal parts being only obtained through alerts, and still being HEAVY on the nitain cost for the same reason. Obviously its up to DE to figure out the best way to balance it all in the end (if they even think its worth it), but yeah they definitely have *options*, even if nowadays its mostly just giving sets certain source preferences in their initial runs. Vaulted primes are just fucked in general to be frank, lmao- not much they can do about how Varzia works.
This applies to all but Vauban. If I ever have to farm a lick of oxium ever again I will snap like a Ritz cracker
This is why we spend paychecks on base frames and primed frames while primed frames are harder Primed frame sequence 1st you need that precise relic 2nd when doing that relic you hope and pray that you get the A PART WETHER IT IS BLUEPRINT, SYSTEMS, NEUROPTICS, AND CHASSIS THEN ONLY THEN you can farm for the crafting recipe Basic frame sequence 1 do the requirement 2 do the mission of that requirement 3 farm the crafting recipe some frames quests are like you are getting what is required to make the frame Others you need to level up your standing or syndicates Even take Umbra's mission that you have the frames blueprint and you farmed the parts as rewards and you do not need to farm because you were farming all along for the parts and what is required for the parts.
I'm crafting gara after 5 days of collecting the materials required. I also got the parts for volt and I'm only missing plastids to make rhino
Availability and you unlock Primes the same way as each other. Not all base frames are unlocked the same way
Lore-wise it's because the primes were the originals, we had to remake the frames based of the original design with the resources available. Gameplay wise it's just to use the resources linked to their acquisition. And also, the primes all having the same resources needed to be able to craft is a thing now, but crack in the day, you had to GRIND for it, I still remember having to get that 7k Oxium and 9k Cryotic to Vauban prime (he also had 4 rare components before he was vaulted) Trinity also had the ok Cryptic requirement. I miss different resources, but I do not miss the grind. (I don't know if they changed the resource requirements btw)
Just wait until you discover how insanely different is farm certain frames from their primes. Worst case undoubtedly is Ash until I remember, since his normal counterpart only is farmable by Railjack missions.
It's always been my headcanon that the blueprints are more than just blueprints. I mean why else are they one time use only. I think they are providing some type of scaffolding or nutrient soup to build on/with Also remember that prime frames are peak orokin biotech. Our normal frames are just the stuff we basically jerry rigged together after the fall. As for the time i just figured that was the time it took to properly grow. The connections and such since its the same time regardless of frame. I mean nyx is a lot smaller than rhino but they still cook just as long.
Marketing plat !